Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Will Petersburg Terrorist Act Stabilize or Destabilize Russia?

Paul
Goble

Staunton, April 4 – Just as he has
in the past, Vladimir Putin is counting on being able to exploit the latest
horrific terrorist attack in Russia to boost his authority, to tighten the
screws on Russian society, and to try to convince Western leaders that they
should overlook his actions in Ukraine in the name of fighting international
terrorism.

But the big question now and in the
coming days is whether he will succeed in these efforts or whether the
precedents from his own past will combine with the fact that this is the first
major terrorist attack in central Russia in seven years and have exactly the
opposite effect, undermining Putin’s power by raising more questions and thus
contributing to destabilization.

Many commentators yesterday and
today are arguing that the Petersburg metro attack which has already killed 11
will generate support for more repressive measures in the name of public
safety, attitudes that Putin’s police state can be counted on to encourage and
then exploit as in the past (rufabula.com/author/azimandis/1560).

Others are saying that the terrorist
attack and the likely response to it effectively “annuls” the impact of the March
26 anti-corruption marches and should end all talk about the weakness of the
regime and the possibility that Russia has entered into a new revolutionary situation
(ivpavlova.blogspot.com/2017/04/3-2017.html
annulled march 26).

There can be little doubt these
themes will have an impact, that Putin will gain support at home for repression
in the name of fighting terrorism, and that he will win the backing of at least
some Western leaders for raising counter-terrorism to the first place in the
world’s agenda, all of which will boost his authority and carry with them the
promise of stabilization in Russia.

In short, Putin’s past actions may
work against him in this case even if it should prove to be true that neither
he nor his siloviki had anything to do with yesterday’s bombing. In the flood
of alternative explanations, at least some will believe that he is to blame now
because he is to blame for earlier and similar crimes that worked to his
benefit.

Second, as some commentators are
pointing out, this is the first such terrorist act in central Russia since
2010. Putin has promoted himself as someone who guarantees stability. But there
are now two indications that he hasn’t succeeded: the March 26 demos and a
major terrorist incident (versia.ru/teraktov-podobnyx-piterskim-v-rossii-ne-bylo-s-2010-goda).

Of course, it would be a mistake to
see this as some kind of final “either-or” situation. Greater stability achieved
by the Putin model could ultimately lead to greater instability given the
changes in popular attitudes, and greater instability as a result of the
terrorist act could become the occasion for the imposition of that model of
stability once again.

But each round of such events is
different than the last not only because both sides have suspicions about the
other on the basis of what they know concerning the past but also because each
sees every new event as raising the stakes and thus making it more, not less
likely that each will harden its position toward the other.